Untuck
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: ...she lets him watch as she changes the sheets as though to say "It's your move now."


Thanks: After just finishing up one of her own fics, jenbachand found the time to look this over for me, and I really appreciate it. And csinut214 for her dictionary-fu. Heh.

* * *

She's making the bed; it's so normal, sprawling across the mattress to secure the further corner before she tucks in the other edges, stretching the cotton and elastic around the bed.

There's a precision to it, the way she moves, how methodically her hands spread over the sheet and press down and under; she's always so conscientious, always so thorough. If he'd ever seen perfect, he would compare it to this moment, to everything she does. Never, with her, has an _i_ gone undotted, a _t_ gone uncrossed.

It surprises him that she approaches something as mundane as making a bed with such precision. He wonders for the briefest of moments if other women, other _people _do the same; assure themselves that the elastic will hold beneath the mattress before spreading their hands across the expanse of the bed to subdue the wrinkles. Grissom knows that others aren't like this, that it's a quirk of hers that he's experiencing, something that (he hopes) no one else has seen.

His bicep rests against the jamb of the door and he's quiet as he watches. But she's trained, she's smart, and he's sure that Sara can absolutely feel his eyes on her back. From the way she holds her head, alert to hear any movements he may make; surely, she doesn't trust him completely yet, and so she won't be caught off guard. If another move is to be made, it will be hers.

They've come together twice-twice in one evening-and neither is completely comfortable around the other. How strange, the love, the lust, the want and need, and still her hand shakes when handing him a carton of milk across her kitchen table.

It was natural for him to question her changing of the sheets after they had so recently lain upon then, but he knows that it's only her reticence to believe that this will last. Sara doesn't set herself up for failure, and to wish for anything more than what they had manage to grasp last evening would be foolish.

So she lets him watch as she changes the sheets as though to say "It's your move now."

Where her hand is, pressed to the center of the bed, is where he had laid her down and stared at her for hours, hours (minutes, maybe seconds). And she'd been unsure but he'd said things, things that he could honestly not repeat as they'd been so intimate and real that he was nearly embarrassed to recall them. Grissom had never spoken such things before, didn't believe that he would ever be in such a place that he could admit such things in bed (while making love).

Pulling the sheet from the basket at her feet she shakes it out before her, once, twice and snap! snap! Fluttering to the bed, their gazes fall in sync watching as pockets of air allow it to blanket out, rippling down. Down and over, and over and tuck...

Perhaps it had been wrong to go for coffee before she had awoken. It filters through his brain, how she may have started at the sight of the empty bed where he'd lain not a few hours before; the possibilities of what she may have thought tremulous for believing that he might not return. But it was he, the scent of dark roast clinging to the fibers of his clothing, who'd slinked back in to find her making the bed.

Grissom watches on as she retrieves the down comforter from the chair in the corner and smoothes it atop the sheets, assures herself that each side has adequate blanket and then begins rearranging the pillows, fitting them into their cases. It's nearly too much, watching her fingers pick and pry the cotton and batting. "I got coffee," he says, by means of an explanation, as a way to break the silence, fell the unexpected tension he senses rising around them.

Sara glances at him over her shoulder, smiles but only a ghost of something. "I know." Returning to the pillows, she fits the other three and arranges them atop the mattress, pulling at edges until she is satisfied.

As she turns to pass him by him, escape to the hallway and the open air of her living room, he stands up straight, relieves himself of the support of the jamb and stands before her. "Sara, last evening..."

There's too much to say, there are too few words in the English language to even attempt to glaze over what it running through his veins, his heart. Never a man of words, he desperately wishes he were one now, that he could fathom some semblance of a sentence, and explanation. There is nothing that comes out, he emits nothing but slow breaths and she waits for him, waits for him to speak.

His hands, thick fingers and rough palms, curl around her biceps and he holds her before him as he attempts to will his tongue to function. Thumbs slide against the cool skin of her arms and she waits, waits, patiently. "Fate," he whispers suddenly, surprising himself for speaking.

Her brow scrunches as she attempts to decipher the meaning, but he continues. "Something that I was destined for, we were destined for... this..." Grissom's mouth opens and closes and the syllables that were to come next are lost and he wears that loss in the features of his face, knows that it's not enough, what he's given her, but there's nothing else, nothing else.

Sara shrugs out of his grip and smoothes her hair back into a tight ponytail, it's a graceful move, akin to her bed-dressing and he craves the knowledge that he's one of the only ones to see her do it. But this isn't the case, hundreds perhaps thousands have seen Sara sweep the hair out of her face. Thousands have seen it and not understood the gentle beauty of the action, how her enticing neck is in full view, how the strands of hair catch the light just so. "Let's just... go have breakfast," she suggests and walks by him, her fingers trailing off of his wrist.

Grissom swallows, glancing back at the room, catching sight of a sharp corner peeking out from beneath the bedspread. He tucks it in, vowing to be the reason that it becomes untucked again.


End file.
